Written and Directed by Yuri Balashov
Reviewed by A. N Orther for The Gordian.
In this darkly dystopian comedy we find a new government policy in place: Relativistic Super-coincidence. The date is 2060. Times are hot. And crowded. The population of humans has exploded. There is just not enough space for everyone. And so the world government (as it is by then) comes up with a novel solution to the problem. Birth control? A limit to how many children a family can produce? No, of course not. Instead, each person is assigned a region of space-time, and the government buys bespoke technology developed by the descendent of the company that makes BlackBoard. This technology allows more than one individual to be located at the same region of spacetime.
Then how many people must materially coincide at that region of space-time is determined by their joint income: lower income, more coincidence. Hence the policy is known as relativistic super-coincidence. If you’re rich enough, you get your own region of spacetime all to yourself.
In regions at which more than 100 people are coinciding, the coincidence is known as super-coincidence, and the people as super-coinciders. The film follows a group of super-coinciders as they go about their day. As one of them says, “this policy is awful. Now I have to go wherever the other super-coinciders do, shower when and where they do, sleep when and where they do, and shit when and where they do. One of them has IBS, and it’s playing havoc with my intestinal system. Plus, if one of us puts on weight we all do, because the world government couldn’t afford to buy the “mostly overlapping relativistic super-coincidence” technology, and instead we all have to coincide at exactly the same region. It's really tough.”
A sobering reflection on just how awful mass humanity can be. Four stars.
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